Malala asks Taliban to let girls go back to schools

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as a schoolgirl, has asked Afghanistan's new rulers to let girls return to school.

It has been a month since Taliban take over Afghanistan and have asked boys to return to schools while ordering girls to stay home.

According to reports, Taliban have said that girls will be allowed to return to school after stricter security is ensured – but many doubt.

"To the Taliban authorities...reverse the de facto ban on girls' education and re-open girls' secondary schools immediately," Yousafzai and a number of Afghan women's rights activists said in an open letter published on Sunday, reports AFP.

Yousafzai called on the leaders of Muslim nations to make it clear to the Taliban that "religion does not justify preventing girls from going to school".

"Afghanistan is now the only country in the world that forbids girls' education," said the writers, who included the head of the Afghan human rights commission under the last US-backed government Shaharzad Akbar.

The authors appealed G20 world leaders to provide urgent funding for an education plan for Afghan children.

A petition together with the letter had on Monday received more than 640,000 signatures.

Education activist Yousafzai was shot by militants from the TTP, in her home town in the Swat valley while on a school bus in 2012.

Now 24 years old, she advocates for girls’ education, with her non-profit Malala Fund having invested $2 million in Afghanistan.